


good grief

by heartofwinterfell



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Knox playing matchmaker, M/M, very badly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 21:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16126835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofwinterfell/pseuds/heartofwinterfell
Summary: “Should we draw up a contract?” Knox jokes, sitting up a little straighter in his chair, a burst of confidence coursing through him.Yeah, he’s going to help Todd romance the hell out of Neil.(Knox and Todd make a pact: by the end of fall semester, Knox will be with Chris and Todd will be with Neil. If only life and Charlie Dalton would stop getting in the way)





	good grief

**Author's Note:**

> me to me: you should spend two years of your life writing a 16k+ fic for an almost 30 year old movie  
> me to me: you’re so right  
> also me to me: and make it for a crackship that no one ships but you  
> also me to me: genius.

_september – junior year_

The Definitive List of Things Knox Overstreet is Certain Of

  1. Neil Perry and Todd Anderson are in love and need to admit it already
  2. Chris Noel is the most beautiful girl alive
  3. Charlie Dalton will one day get arrested for trespassing



“We’re going to get arrested.”

The bobby pin stolen from the girl’s dressing room in the theater department (“they gave you that kinda access, Perry? This is shaping up to be a great year”) breaks in the lock. Someone swears.

“No one gets arrested for this.”

The junior burglar produces another bobby pin from his pocket, extracts the broken fragments from the lock, and begins jimmying again.

“It’s called breaking and entering!”

At least two people groan.

“We told you to stay home.”

Richard Cameron has nothing to say to that. He jams his hands into the pockets of his pea coat (though the weather has yet to dip below the mid-sixties) and frowns that sullen frown he has perfected over two years of never getting his way. The third is shaping up to be no different.

Knox is grateful the constant dissenter has decided to shut up, but seven boys crowded around a locked door in an academic building after midnight on a Saturday night is cause for public safety concern. It doesn’t help that Charlie Dalton clearly has never picked a lock in his life. On bobby pin number four now and the lock still refuses to budge.

“Maybe we should get going…” Meeks says from the back, voicing what Knox would be too scared to say.

“Ginny Danbury’s thing is still going on and she said we could all stop by.” Neil, surprisingly. Surprising because he had been the first to jump on Charlie’s plan for debauchery and treachery on their first weekend back on campus.

And at the name Ginny Danbury, Knox can’t help but notice the way Todd freezes up beside Neil. Knox tries to be kind and not roll his eyes. With the way Pitts’s elbow digs into his ribs a moment later, others are not so inclined to ignore the obvious. Knox shuffles to the side, closer now to Charlie, still kneeling on the ground by the door though his hands have stalled on the doorknob.

He turns to look at his friends, annoyance evident on his face. “If you guys want to spend the rest of your night at a sophomore party, go right ahead. I, a proud junior with loftier goals than spending my second to last first weekend packed like a sardine in a tiny sophomore dorm where they’re probably already out of alcohol, will choose to spend my night discovering the secrets that lay hidden in the Whitman exorcism room.”

With that, Charlie turns back to the door.

Knox ignores Cameron’s painfully hard eye roll to exchange a look with Meeks who exchanges a look with Pitts who looks at Todd who has been looking at Neil the entire time and so they all turn to Neil, the second greatest Charlie enabler. Second only to Knox himself, so when Neil looks back at him, Knox sighs and shrugs his shoulders.

Knox kneels down behind Charlie, “Hey, maybe I can give it…”

It is at that very moment that Charlie wrenches the jammed bobby pin out of the lock, sending his arm shooting back, his elbow colliding with Knox’s eye.

“Jesus Christ!”

And that is how Knox Overstreet ends up in health services bright and early Sunday morning, seated among the freshmen students passing off hangover symptoms as migraines to get the aspirin they forgot to bring from home. The nurse practitioner takes one look at his throbbing, blackened eye and assumes he was in a barroom brawl. Harsh judgment colors the rest of the appointment.

He leaves with a refreezable ice packet and a pocket full of off-brand Tylenol and runs directly into Chris Noel because the world at large hates him.

“Hey, Knox…” Chris, blonde hair swinging in a high ponytail and shining in the blistering still summer sun, looks horrified at the sight of him. “Jesus, what happened?”

“I…” Knox tries to think of a way to make getting elbowed in the eye sound cool or dangerous, but all he can hear is Charlie snickering in the back of his head. “We were trying to get into the Whitman exorcism room…Charlie kinda hit me…it was an accident.”

“Pretty rough accident,” Chris says with a small laugh and Knox laughs along with her, trying to forget it’s at his own misfortune.

“What brings you to health services?” Knox asks, the obvious question to keep the conversation going.

“Oh, just a check-up for my knee. My doctor’s pretty sure I’ll be able to play most of the season if everything looks good.”

Knox makes a pact right then and there to go to every women’s soccer game this semester.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to those with you,” Charlie says later that night as he tries to find a place to put the cross he stole from the exorcism room. Todd had suggested over the fireplace. Charlie argued that made them look like religious zealots.

After Meeks and a disgruntled Cameron took a dazed Knox back to the house, Todd had succeeded in picking the lock (“I got the ball rolling for him”). Apparently the room was actually only used for storage, but Charlie had managed to find a box of crosses in various sizes and conditions. He, of course, chose the oldest, most decrepit looking one and now insists on hanging it somewhere in the living room.

“You say that like I would want you to go.” Knox can picture it now, Charlie with a box of cracker jacks he brought from their house making obscene comments about the uniforms until a boyfriend of one of the players chased them off the bleachers. And Knox pictures it so well because it happened last fall.

He’ll take Todd instead.

Todd, who hasn’t said anything since the shot down fireplace suggestion, who hasn’t even looked up from his gigantic poetry anthology, suddenly snaps to attention when familiar footsteps come rushing down the stairs.

“Where are you running off to?” Charlie asks.

Neil’s about halfway out the door when he calls over his shoulder, “Ginny wants to run lines for our audition tomorrow.” The door shuts behind him before he can hear their chorus of goodbyes.

Knox can’t help looking to Todd. His nose is further buried in the anthology now, but Knox can see the sad flush of his cheeks. Emotion radiates so readily and so fiercely off of Todd that the whole room will soon be drowned in his somber mood. If Charlie senses the shift yet, he says nothing. Instead, he swats Meeks from his place on the couch so he can try a new spot for the cross.

With a little sigh, Knox drifts out of the room and up the stairs. He slips into his room and says a silent prayer to their new god downstairs that Charlie will let him have an hour’s peace. When the door opens immediately after he thinks “amen” it’s hard to suppress a groan.

“Charlie, we’re not hanging that thing in here…”

Knox jumps a little when he meets Todd’s sad eyes instead of Charlie’s mischievous ones.

“Sorry, I can just…I’ll go…sorry…”

If Knox doesn’t stop this, Todd will be muttering apologies into tomorrow morning. So Knox pulls out a desk chair, swings it around, and sits, hoping Todd will take the hint to sit too. It takes an anxious minute, but Todd finally perches awkwardly on the end of Charlie’s bed.

“What’s up?” Knox would bet his father’s million he could guess what’s on Todd’s mind, but with Todd, they always have to let him have his stammering before he gets to the point.

“I…” Todd pauses immediately. Knox tries to school any expressions from his face that will send Todd running for the hills. He ponders what possible expressions might expedite this conversation. A casual smile? Blank face that remains somehow open? The inquisitive look that Pitts has mastered over years of listening to Charlie schemes and Neil monologues and Meeks hypothesis and all the babbling of Knox himself in between?

He checks back into the heart-heart when Todd says his name, “Knox…you’re…you like romance, right?”

Knox feels his cheeks heat up. He’s used to Charlie and Neil teasing him for being a hopeless romantic – “lover boy Knox” – but that’s always in jest. Hearing Todd say it in earnest makes Knox feel a strange concoction of proud and embarrassed. Proud because he wants to wear his heart on his sleeves, not so dissimilar to Todd.

Embarrassed because a heart constantly on his sleeve does not mean he has any real experience in love. Also not so dissimilar to Todd.

It’s Knox’s turn to stammer. “I-I…romance is alright.” His voice goes up on the last syllable. With a groan, Knox drops his forehead on to the back of the chair. “I love love and love hates me.”

He half expects to hear Todd laugh at that, but Todd is not and never will be Charlie Dalton. Knox peeks through his folded arms and sees his friend smiling at him, eyes full of understanding. Knox props his chin on his arms and returns the smile. “I’m not gonna be the best one to come to for romantic advice. I’m just as hopeless as…” The you dies in his throat. “I’m just hopeless.”

“That’s kind of why I came to you.”

Knox scrunches his face at that and waits for Todd to continue with the singular thought: this ought to be interesting.

“It’s just…Meeks is never interested in this kind of stuff.” Undeniably true. “I’d be scared of Pitts’ advice…if he had any.” Fair. “Cameron…”

“Is Cameron,” Knox supplies.

“And Charlie…”

“Is Charlie,” Knox finishes with a grin. Todd mirrors him, but the smile is gone just as quickly. Knox softens. “And you can’t go to Neil.”

If Todd is surprised Knox has connected all the dots and then some, his weepy puppy dog eyes don’t show it. He only ducks his head. “I can’t go through another whole year of wishing something will happen and then never doing anything to make it happen. But I don’t think…I’ll never just be able to come out and say it. I’m…”

“Afraid of rejection?”

“And making a fool of myself.”

“And ruining what you already have.”

They’re exchanging more sad, soft smiles and Knox’s heart aches for Todd. He knows the stakes are so much higher for him with Neil, higher than they’ll ever be for Knox with Chris. Still, he feels a strange bond now staked between them. Two romantics desperately afraid that the person they want will soon become the person they will never have.

Todd clears his throat and the sad smile vanishes, replaced with a look of quiet determination Knox has not seen before. “I wanted to make a pact…or maybe a deal…I –uh don’t know exactly what to call it. But by the end of the semester, I’ll show Neil how I feel and you’ll show Chris. We’ll help each other.”

By the end of the semester. That leaves a whole three semesters before the end of his college career for Knox to spend with Chris. Semesters filled with all the dream dates Knox has meticulously planned and fantasized about in his head. Coffee dates on weekdays, restaurant dates in town on Friday nights, seasonal dates to build snowman in the park and go swimming at the lake and hold hands through the annual haunted corn maze, and celebrate an anniversary with all the beautiful clichés.

All the gooey romance Charlie ribs him over, sweetly realized and celebrated with Chris.

Could it really work? Giving himself a timetable and another person sharing in his trials and miseries may be the missing pieces in the “woo Chris” puzzle. And it comes with the added bonus of helping two of his best friends finally say they’re in love.

“Should we draw up a contract?” Knox jokes, sitting up a little straighter in his chair, a burst of confidence coursing through him.

Yeah, he’s going to help Todd romance the hell out of Neil.

 

...

 

_october_

The Definitive List of Things Not Allowed to Happen at Halloween Bash (Posted by Knox Overstreet, amended by Steven Meeks and Richard Cameron, defaced by Charlie Dalton and Neil Perry and probably Gerard Pitts)

  1. Throwing up in places outside the bathroom _(or in the sink or in the shower)_
  2. Setting anything on fire
  3. Directing couples to other Poets’ rooms _**(except Cameron’s)**_
  4. _**Dipping into anyone’s extra supplies (PITTS)**_ (you need peppermint schnapps one time…)
  5. **Todd turning in early**



Knox is pretty positive one of their jack-o-lanterns is on fire outside. How that’s possible, Knox has no idea nor will he be the one to solve that particular conundrum. He has enough to worry about and the greatest worry has locked himself in his room.

“You’re breaking rule number five!”

There’s a mumbled response from the other side of the door and Knox deciphers it as “I don’t care!” but it also could have been “Leave me here to die.”

It’s been a rough two months.

There had been a naïve and arrogant part of Knox that assumed once he got into the game, he’d have Todd and Neil together in no time. They both are so obviously enamored with each other that Knox expected the smallest of romantic gestures would send the two crashing into each other’s arms.

As it turns out, Neil and Todd’s relationship has more miscommunication and comedic errors than one of Neil’s beloved Shakespeare plays.

Knox first suggested Todd start initiating little touches. In Knox’s mind, that translated to a hand on the thigh instead of knee or a brush along the lower back as they entered a room together. Instead, Todd started the second week of September off with awkward hands on Neil’s shoulder or a singular pat on his knee. That devolved into strangely bro-like claps on the shoulder blades and one very cringe-inducing butt tap.

(“Did he just…?”

“I guess that’s one way to tap that ass, Anderson.”)

A week and a half into “Operation: Small Acts of Intimacy” and Meeks actually asked Knox and Charlie if they thought Todd had gotten over Neil. The only silver lining of the whole debacle was Knox observing Neil looking genuinely forlorn by Todd veering into frat bro territory with his affection.

First week of October, Knox suggested Todd go to Neil for fake relationship advice and try to drop subtle hints about what kind of person Todd would be interested in. Hints that definitively pointed to a person exactly like Neil.

By the second week of October, all the roommates outside of Todd had heard enough of Neil’s passive-aggressive comments about some girl Todd was interested in that did not deserve him.

(“…and apparently she’s interested in acting…”

“Knoxious, please start slamming my head against the wall.”

“Not unless you kill me first.”)

The leaves had changed and the Halloween decorations went up around campus and “Operation: Dropping Hints” was a bust.

“Operation: Midterm Makeout Mania” went nowhere just as fast.

Knox kept orchestrating ways to get Todd and Neil alone, studying late at night together, in hopes it would trigger a late night, stress-relieving kiss. Hell, Knox would have taken a late, stress-relieving cuddle session. By the end of midterms, Knox had agreed to be a science experiment for Meeks, a flashcard tester for Cameron, a two-paper editor for Pitts, and a stress relief cuddle buddy for Charlie several times, all to get them away from the living room or out of the house altogether.

(“Tell me why we don’t do this more often?”

“I can’t feel my left arm.”

“Think Neil and Todd are making out downstairs?”

“For the sake of my arm, I hope so.”)

The most action Todd saw was an accidental hand brush. Knox is going out of his mind.

He’s hardly thought of Chris.

And now it’s Halloween. In the night’s honor, he’s implementing a batshit crazy idea. Or at least he’s trying to.

“Todd, what do you actually have to lose?” Knox yells. He wants to add that it’s Neil who wrote rule number five, Neil who wants to make sure Todd has fun at this party, but that’s a little too much to communicate through a door and over the screamo-metal-concert-loud stereo music downstairs.

The door opens a crack. Knox can just make out Todd’s mop of sandy hair. “He’ll think it’s dumb.”

“No way.” Knox puts on his best reassuring smile. “If anything, he won’t even realize.”

Todd slowly inches the door open and finally slips into the hall. His metal shoulder strikes the doorframe and the clang reverberates through the hall. He jumps a little at the sound and then jumps a second time when Knox grips that same shoulder.

“You look great. Now go down there before Neil storms up here himself.”

Todd nods, but his body is one long line of tension. Hard to maneuver metal armor does not help with that. Knox follows him down the stairs, ready to snag his chainmail if he misses a step.

The party is picking up. Their entire living room is packed with girls in white dress shirts and tall knee socks and guys in various cheap ensembles Jim would have (or did) wear on The Office. The only reason all his roommates stick out from the crowd is because Charlie demanded they go big or not bother showing up to their own house tonight.

The Halloween King himself holds court under his crucifix. Knox can just see the top of his head, his hotly anticipated costume that none of them were allowed to see before tonight entirely obscured from this angle.

Knox spies Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster by the punch bowl, surely debating how they could improve the room's terrible acoustics for the next party. Ferris Bueller is talking a sophomore girl’s ear off in the corner (it was Charlie who suggested Ferris as a costume for Cameron, knowing he’d never really get the irony). That left only one roommate unaccounted for.

At that moment, because the gods always smile down on him, Neil emerges from the crowd just as Charlie’s multi-colored disco ball washes him in warm yellow light. A halo to match his angel wings. Knox deserved a drink or five for convincing Neil not only to be an angel, but an angel in a white sleeveless dress.

If he added a long brunette wig to the ensemble, Neil would be the spitting image of Claire Danes. And his knight in shining armor stands motionless at Knox’s side, perhaps needing some work on his Leo impression.

“What took you so long?” Neil asks. He passes his drink off to Todd who passes it to Knox who drinks it in one gulp. “You look great.”

Under normal circumstances, Knox would have ribbed Neil a little for staring unabashedly at only Todd when he gave the compliment. But he’s a little too giddy over a good start to the night, the first sign things might be going his way.

As if the universe wants to cement his happiness, Chris Noel magically appears, saddling up to Knox’s left side.

“Well don’t you look like royalty? Prince…Philip? The one from _Sleeping Beauty_?” Chris guesses and Knox’s heart soars at her recognition. Her eyes flicker off somewhere over the sea of people. When her gaze returns again, Chris giggles before saying, “I think you’re missing your princess.”

His soaring heart stops completely. Is she flirting with him? When he takes in her costume, he’s a little disappointed to see she’s far from a princess in her Mad Hatter get-up. At least they’re following a Disney theme?

He opens his mouth to comment on that, but her eyes have fallen on Todd and Neil. “Aw, that’s so cute. I love _Romeo + Juliet_.”

As if Chris is not already perfect enough.

“Operation: Couples Costume” hinges on other people commenting on Neil and Todd’s romantic ensemble. The idea is that enough people see Neil and Todd as a couple that they start falling into it themselves. Chris’s compliment will be the litmus test. If Neil does not deny anything, Knox will be ready to pop the champagne.

It happens as if in slow motion. Neil’s brow crinkles in confusion. His eyes flicker over to Todd and his armor. He glances down at his own white dress, his hand brushing the bottom of his angel wing. Knox can almost see his mind playing the Capulet party scene in his head, replacing Claire and Leo with himself and Todd waving through a fish tank. The costumes are indistinct enough to pass off as a funny coincidence. Or they can play along. Knox sees the smile pulling at Neil’s lips.

Ginny Danbury chooses that moment to enter their circle, taking a place next to angel Neil. Bright red shift dress, fishnet stockings, little horns a top her head.

Now there’s a couple’s costume.

“Hey, we match!”

Knox has to snag Todd’s wrist to keep him from running upstairs, but it only ends with Todd huddled by the fridge instead. Knox attempts to use his body to block the view of Neil and Ginny’s conversation. He briefly wonders where Chris went, if she thought to follow them into the kitchen, but he banishes all thoughts of her. It’s the least he can do for Todd.

After a few excruciatingly long minutes, soundtracked by a painful “Thriller” trap remix, Knox tries to speak, “Todd, I’m so…”

“Hey, hey, hey! Where are your drinks?”

Knox inwardly groans. The only person who could make this situation worse than Charlie is drunk Charlie.

“I expect this from Anderson, but you Knoxious?”

Knox refuses to look at him, even when he swings an arm around his shoulder and nearly jostles them both into the stove. It’s when Knox attempts to shoot Todd an apologetic look that he notices the way Todd is looking between them, eyes comically wide in bewilderment.

So at last, he glances at Charlie.

He immediately wishes he hadn’t.

He also wishes he were the one set on fire, not their poor jack-o-lantern.

Maybe it’s Knox’s fault for not noticing the blonde wig earlier, complete with a pink tiara. The hot pink ball gown is so shockingly perfect that Knox has to guess Charlie paid an exuberant amount of money for it. Money spent to make sure every person knows exactly which princess he is.

“You motherfucker.” Knox bursts out from under Charlie’s arm and bolts to Todd’s side. He hopes it looks like steam is coming from his ears. He’s fuming.

“What’s the problem?”

“You knew I was dressing up as Prince Philip, so you…you…!” All Knox can do is motion up and down in Charlie’s direction.

Charlie casually takes a sip of his drink. Even in his haze of anger, he notes Charlie tied together his ensemble with bright pink lipstick. It smears on the white lip of his cup. “I thought you were supposed to be Robin Hood.”

“No! No you didn’t!” He was fully vindicated ten minutes earlier by Chris recognizing his costume. Charlie knew exactly who Knox is supposed to be.

Before Knox can yell any more, he feels a tug on his sleeve. Todd had drifted a little closer to Charlie, that much closer to the stairs. “I think I’m heading up.”

“Rule five! I’m calling rule five on that!” Charlie taps his middle finger on the fridge list.

Knox refuses to be in agreement with Charlie on this, so he ignores the princess completely and takes a step towards Todd. “This can still work.”

Over Todd’s shoulder, he can spy Neil standing exactly where they left him, talking to the exact same person. That should hardly matter. Because Knox knows Neil only cares about Todd. Knox is sure Neil knows he only cares about Todd. Even Sleeping Beauty from hell knows Neil only cares about Todd.

But Todd will never trust any of those statements coming from Knox.

He sees the tears welling up in Todd’s eyes and Knox has to take the loss. He gently squeezes Todd’s shoulder. “Text me or something if you need anything.”

Knox and Charlie both watch in silence as Todd makes his way towards the stairs, purposefully weaving through crowds to avoid being seen by Neil. Meeks, Pitts, and Cameron all take notice though. Meeks locks eyes with Knox before nudging Pitts and soon they’ll all be convening in the kitchen.

“He has to know…”

Knox cuts Charlie off, “He can talk himself out of any happiness.”

“Jesus, that’s pretty dark, my prince.”

Knox recognizes that as Charlie’s attempt to lighten the mood before Meeks, Pitts, and Cameron arrive. He’ll try to take the bait.

“I prefer the blue dress.”

“Huh?”

“I prefer my Sleeping Beauty in blue.”

 

...

 

_november I_

The Definitive List of Things Knox Overstreet Regrets

  1. Jumping off his porch when he was six because he thought he could fly
  2. Agreeing to take a poetry writing class with Todd
  3. Letting Charlie convince him their room needed a goldfish



“We’ll be back in a few hours, my darling, don’t miss us too much,” Charlie coos. Perhaps the adoring face he’s making would be sweet if it was not one hundred percent bullshit and happening over a fish bowl.

“I will buy you coffee for a week if you get rid of that thing.” Knox sends Charlie a mild glare through the mirror as he holds up two different tie options. Did a red tie make him look like a sensitive poet who absolutely prepared for a class mandated open mic night? Or did the blue plaid better conceal that he’d rather swallow Charlie’s stupid goldfish than read a half-baked poem in front of his far more talented classmates?

He blames this all on Todd, sweet and shy Todd who would never take a creative class without a friend there for moral support. And while he’s at it, he blames Neil for not being able to fit the class into his schedule like he always had in the past. And he blames Charlie and he blames the goldfish because neither have ever been any help ever.

“Seriously, what will it take for you to get rid of it? I have a twenty in my wallet.” That doesn’t even get Charlie to look away from the bowl. “I’ll help with the Cameron prank you were talking about yesterday.”

Charlie’s head snaps up. Their eyes lock in the mirror. Knox watches him ponder the bargain, so he sees the exact moment Charlie rejects it. “I’m never letting Goldie go.” Charlie goes as far as sticking a finger into the bowl to try to pet the fish. Knox gags.

“And quite frankly, Goldie is getting pretty upset her papa treats her with such disdain,” Charlie says as he finally leaves the fish bowl and throws himself on Knox’s bed. He meets Knox’s eyes in the mirror again and puts on his best pout.

“Maybe her papa doesn’t want to get attached since her daddy is going to end up killing her in a few days,” Knox grumbles. He tosses the red tie in the general direction of their closet. Red will make him stand out too much. Blue plaid it is. Just as he begins tying, he notes Charlie miserably failing to stay composed behind him. “What?”

“Daddy?” Charlie asks, all faux innocence with a perfectly raised eyebrow. “You know, I thought the sex usually stopped with a new arrival, but I’m glad you like to keep things kinky, Knoxious.”

“Charlie!”

The door bursts open, almost bashing Knox and effectively cutting off any sort of comeback. Neil stands in their doorway, doing a first-rate Cameron impression with his red face and air of impatience.

“If you guys don’t get in the car right now, you can clean Todd’s puke out of the fireplace.”

“That bad?” Charlie asks as he moves to grab his jacket.

“I’m having Pitts bring paper bags and two bottles of pepto bismol,” Neil says with a wince. His eyes flicker over to Knox, giving him a once over. “Maybe a red tie instead?”

“Gee, thanks dad,” Knox mumbles, but Neil’s out the door and out of earshot. Charlie isn’t.

“So daddy’s just for me then?”

Knox rips off the offending blue tie and turns on Charlie. “Look, I know I probably seem more put together than Todd, but I’m also kinda freaking out here. So I’m really not in the mood for the sex jokes and the fish jokes or the gross smelly fish in general, okay?

Charlie looks floored. If Knox was not getting sucked into a panic spiral, he’d take time to enjoy Charlie at a loss for words. Instead, Knox just fills the silence himself. “I didn’t want to take this class and I literally wrote this poem last night because I’ve been too busy helping...I’ve been too busy with other things and now I have to perform this shitty thing in front of all my better classmates and you guys because god forbid you take a night off from giving me shit and yeah I know you’re also coming to support Todd, but…”

Knox had forgotten to breath halfway through his tirade and he has to pause abruptly to suck in air. In the interim, he steps out of the moment and has the dawning realization he’s started to sound like a lunatic.

He sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. Bits of overapplied hair gel come off in his hand.

“Just…” He desperately wants to say get rid of the fish. But there’s an equally desperate look of guilt on Charlie’s face. And Knox kind of hates that he put it there. “Let’s go.”

The red tie is still gripped in Knox’s right hand. He’ll have to put it on in the car. He starts inching towards the door, leaving Charlie the option to bolt out in front of him. As he always likes to do when moments between them turn sour and serious.

“You go,” Charlie says. Knox stalls in the door, but Charlie waves him off. “Just make up an excuse so Neil doesn’t stab me when I get in the car. Tell him I’m throwing up.”

“From excitement?” Knox jokes weakly.

“Yeah,” Charlie says with a crescent-moon smile.

Knox makes it to the car just as Neil’s getting Meeks to blare on the horn. Pitts is leaning into Meeks’s space and beeping what sounds like Bohemian Rhapsody by the time Charlie strolls out the door.

Knox spends the car ride trying to get Todd’s face out of brown paper bag.

And that’s nothing compared to shepherding him into the cafe. It’s immediately clear the place is a local watering hole for knitting clubs and Peruvian coffee lovers who listen to Hozier. Apparently their small college town is made up exclusively of these patrons - it’s a packed house.

Not for the first time, Knox wishes the campus coffee shop had been a satisfying venue for Professor Keating.

(“How can you expect to grow in your poetry  
if you do not listen to verses of the greater public?”)

The professor has gathered their little class in a low-lit corner close to the tiny stage. Knox tugs Todd over by the elbow. They take their places in the outer circle and it sounds like they’ll just hear the tail end of Mr. Keating’s inspiring pep talk. Waiting for Charlie had to cost them something.

Knox spies Charlie at a table close to the front of the stage. He’s schmoozing a collection of knitting club enthusiasts. A lady peers at him with distaste over her baby blue cat-eye glasses. Neil chooses that moment to swoop in and hit the little old ladies with his smile that sparkles at the corners.

Knox counts to thirty in his head and suddenly all the ladies are vacating the table so their roommates can sit.

There are days Knox really does question if Neil is human.

Professor Keating clapping his hands together snaps Knox’s attention back. “And now what you’re actually waiting for: the order!” He lists off a few of the girls in the class who Knox suspected begged to go first. Then, square in the middle: “After Beth is Knox and after Knox, our dear friend Todd.”

In the way he says our dear friend Todd, Professor Keating must know Todd is a handful of other poets away from a total meltdown. But he makes no comment and finishes the list. And with its conclusions, the class drifts off to various points in the room - some to greet friends, others to practice their best brooding delivery faces.

Knox pulls Todd close to the coffee bar. It’s been over twenty-fours since they last discussed the plan about transpire. Knox needs to know if Todd still wants to follow through.

“Are you ready?”

Todd lets out a harsh gush of breath as a response.

“You’re going to be great. And he’s going to love it.”

“We are all going to love Mr. Anderson’s work, Mr. Overstreet. He is truly a talent.” Professor Keating’s appearance makes Knox jerk his elbow into a sugar dispenser. The barista - hired from the Peruvian coffee Hozier fan pool - glares at him.

“Thanks, Professor Keating,” Todd says to his shoes.

“As long as you’re speaking truly and from the heart, my boy, there’s no way to fail.” Professor Keating places a reassuring hand on Todd’s shoulder, drawing his eyes up. “But I believe you already knew that.”

Todd and the professor share the smiles of a master and his prized student and Knox suddenly feels he’s intruding on a personal moment. He makes to step away, but Professor Keating beats him to it.

“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, but I have someone holding a seat.” He turns his back before either can say goodbye, making for the back of the house.

When Knox turns back to Todd, his friend is still watching Keating go with the most genuine smile Knox has seen from him all night.

“So that’s what it takes?” Knox asks, trying not to sound too incredulous. “I’ve been coaching you and encouraging you all week, but he says like three sentences and suddenly you’re all smiley and confident?”

“He knows me,” Todd says with a shrug.

Knox’s muted gasp of outrage is out before he realizes Todd’s joking.

It’s Todd turn to lead them through the crowd, to their prize table and the two seats saved there. Neil motions for Todd to sit next to him, as if it would not have happened anyway. That leaves Knox sandwiched between Pitts and Meeks. He’s silently thankful he has a little distance from Charlie. The guilty look he had post-tirade sticks uncomfortably at the forefront of Knox’s mind.

So he tries to look everywhere but across the table. What makes it difficult is the way Neil ducks his head to whisper to Charlie once Todd has settled in his seat. Knox narrows his eyes - he knows those head ducks. That’s their conspiring position.

The emcee for the event taps twice on the microphone. The room quiets save for the low buzz of nerves and excitement. Knox chooses to give his friends the benefit of the doubt that they’re only conspiring to give Todd the largest applause of the night.

The first hour passes in a swirl of couplets concerning over blooming gardens, stargazing in a field while contemplating the meaning of death, and odes to ex-boyfriends lost to foggy alcohol-laced nights. The repetitiveness should be sleep-inducing, but Knox keeps finding beauty in the rhymes that would soon be compared alongside his own.

He can tell Todd must feel similarly. He cannot stop jerking his knee under the table. Knox silently wills Neil to rest his hand on his knee to still it, but Neil keeps his hands folded on the table. He’s politely listening, more than any of their other friends. Pitts has nearly succumbed to his droopy lids several times. Meeks keeps subtly checking his phone under the table. Even Cameron is fiddling mindlessly with a straw wrapper.

And Charlie has a strangely distant look on his face. Whenever his mind appears to check back into the coffee shop, he shoves his hand in his jacket pocket, as if to check something is still there. It’s disconcerting.

Knox wants this night to end.

“Next up: Knox Overstreet.”

Small amendment: Knox wants someone to eject him into space.

All of his friends are suddenly the picture of perfect audience members. Pitts slaps him on the back just as he begins to stand. He shoots him a weak smile before he starts making his way to the stage. The logical part of his brain knows that half the room will zone out, if they have not already. But it’s the other half of the room, the half of the room with their eyes glued to him, that make Knox worried he’s about to step onstage and into a fever dream where he forgot to put his clothes on.

He climbs the two steps on to the stage.

And promptly trips on the flat two foot distance between the top stair and the mic.

He hears Pitts’s very distinct cough to hide a laugh. Others in the audience see no need to hide their amusement.

All the blood in his body must be in his face when he steps up to the microphone.

He refuses to look into the audience, excusing it by focusing intensely on pulling his poem out of his pocket and carefully unfolding it. He clears his throat - even as it’s painfully dry - and begins:

 _“The heavens made the girl I love,_  
_her hair and skin of gold._  
_To touch her would be paradise,_  
_Save me from the lonely cold.”_

His voice peters out, the lights beating down on him, and the anxious rush swooping through Knox’s stomach is reminiscent of what he felt at six years old, at a moment in free fall believing he could fly.

The tepid applause is a blow all too similar to crash landing on the deck. His arm aches with phantom pain as he trudged off the platform. In a minuscule victory, he does not trip on the way out.

To his surprise, Todd has already arrived by the stage. His hands are mid-clap, making him the only applauder left, when Knox wraps him up in a hug, whispering “You got this.” He feels Todd minutely nod and, at that, he pulls away to give Todd room to climb the steps.

Todd does not trip the first time around.

Knox lingers by the coffee bar instead of immediately going back to the table. He wants to be there for Todd when he gets of the stage just as Todd was there for him.

And maybe he also wants to avoid his friends’ cheerful mocking a little while longer. He can feel the heat of at least one person’s eyes on him. His gaze stays stubbornly forward.

Todd draws an intricately folded piece of paper from his pocket. To one of the hipsters or old ladies populating the back tables, Todd must look the portrait of a concentrated artist. From his spot at the counter, and his two and a half years of seeing every shade of Todd, Knox can tell it’s taking all his concentration to control his shaking hands.

He smoothes out the page once before his eyes flicker up. He draws in a breath. Knox holds his.

 _"If what I feel for you is not love,  
_ _Tell that to my rapid fire..."_

Todd halts mid-line. Knox knows because he has the poem all but memorized, the scraps of stanzas from countless drafts swirling around his brain. The next word is _pulse_  and Knox wills Todd to continue.

In a moment that reads as bravery, Todd jams the paper in his pocket and takes another breath.

Before the new words flow from his lips, Knox knows he abandoned ship without the watchman even calling iceberg.

 _"Rapid fire_  
_I hit the ground_  
_I hold out, hold out for home_  
_Hold out for someone coming, someone saving, someone doing_  
_Doing better by me, for me, with me_  
_Wanting to get up, wishing to know how_  
_Trying to be more than a passing thing, a thing passed by_  
_Outlasting fire, outlasting rapids_  
_Stumbling on, stumbling home"_

Thunderous applause fills every space of the packed room. It’s hard to believe the cafe walls hold. Todd, as if blown back by the soundwaves, takes a surprised step back. Never one to relish even the most deserved praise, Todd bolts off the stage. He runs straight for Knox, like expects Knox can shield from all the noise.

Knox is halfway to hugging Todd when he blurts out, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” Knox answers, a little more bluntly than he means to.

“I-...I didn’t read our poem...I ruined the plan.”

Knox grips Todd’s shoulders with both hands, shaking him lightly. “Dude, you absolutely killed it. Don’t worry about a dumb plan. We’ll get him next time.” Knox winks before he can stop himself. He and Todd cringe together, twin grins on their faces.

They weave their way through labyrinth of circular tables and wedged in plush chairs, doing their best not to distract from the ballad of cigarettes and folk song slow dances happening on stage. Distraction happens anyway when they both collapse at their center table and Pitts immediately jostles the life out of Knox.

“You did it, man!”

Knox’s performance did not earn the gleeful grin on Pitts’s face. The nod of polite approval from Cameron, on the other hand, feels about right. Knox finds himself easily distracted when he glances over Pitts’s shoulder and spies Neil whispering into Todd’s ear, hand cupped over the back of his neck.

Who said the poem had to be romantic anyway.

“Uh Knox?”

“Yeah?” Knox swivels back towards Meeks.

“I said I bet you wish Chris had been here to hear your poem.”

Cameron and Pitts both snort and Knox’s ears start burning.

But if Meeks wants the truth, Knox had hardly thought of Chris in the moments before or after reading his dumb poem. Distantly, as he read it, he remembered writing it in a three a.m. haze of desperation, love, and two cans of Red Bull. No heart went into it - not at the moment of writing and not at the moment of performing. Chris deserved greater rhymed declarations of passion.

He’s drifting down that trail of thought when Meeks clears his throat. Pitts, Cameron, and Meeks are all looking at him, expecting an answer.

Knox pivots sharply instead.

“Where’s Charlie?”

Lost in the hub of congratulations, Knox had not noticed Charlie’s seat suspiciously empty. All his roommates’ eyes are on the vacant chair now, his missing presence looming nearly as large as his usual existence.

Neil half-shrugged and motioned behind him without turning. “Think he went somewhere over there.”

“Please be more vague,” Cameron deadpans.

That comment launches Neil and Pitts into a skit of pointing in different directions, frequently up at the ceiling or down at floor to the chagrin of Cameron (“Oh, so you’re saying he’s burning in hell?”) and Knox is halfway to wondering why another table has not shushed him when Meeks sounds the alarm.

“Uhm, I think I know where he went,”

All of his roommates snap their heads in the direction of Meeks’s gaze, but they must already know deep in their guts where Charlie is. Knox certainly does. And he desperately does not want to look, wills himself to stare at his balled fists resting in his lap, but his chin tilts up its own, in time to watch Charlie Dalton loudly tap on the microphone.

The whole cafe is doomed.

“Alright, this one goes out to my roommate, Knox.” Please do not point at roommate Knox.

With frightening accuracy, Charlie’s finger all but pierces him in the heart. Charlie then clears his throat so brutally, no one could be blamed for thinking he had a real frog lodged in it.

Knox wants the frog to crawl back down and kill him.

 _“There once was a goldfish named Goldie_  
_Who lived in a bowl rather moldy._  
_But she drove Knox insane_  
_So she went down the drain,_  
_And that is the story of Goldie.”_

“Thank you and goodnight!”

Charlie returns to his seat with very little applause. That doesn’t stop him from pausing every few steps to take exaggerated bows and a curtsey or two along the way. Knox bites back his laughter. Pitts and Neil do not.

“Was that supposed to be an apology poem to me?” Knox whisper-asks once yet another gray haired old woman gets up to read a poem about her garden.

“Yeah, I thought of the goldfish as a metaphor for our drowning relationship.”

Knox stifles another laugh. “So, you flushed our relationship down the toilet?”

“No, I sacrificed Goldie so that our relationship could survive. Were you even listening?” A whole little group of old gray haired ladies glares at Charlie from two tables over. Charlie blows them a kiss.

“I don’t think you understand what a metaphor is.”

“You’re the one in the poetry class. Teach me.” Charlie lands the line with his trademark smirk. Knox should slap him upside the head, little old ladies be damned. He should at least bluster out a comeback.

He blushes instead.

 

...

 

_november II_

The Definitive List of Romantic Gestures Knox Overstreet Knows Never Fail

  1. Slow dancing in the rain
  2. A love poem, read aloud
  3. A bouquet of red roses



On a list that only includes three-bullet points, it sucks having to cross out number two.

He has no idea how to orchestrate a slow dance in the rain organically for two people, neither of whom is him. He’s also pretty sure Todd’s still recovering from that cold contracted after Charlie insisted they play a mud bowl touch football game. Rain will have to be left out of any future plans.

And Knox is running out of those.

He’s going for a classic now, the solid number three on the list. A dozen long stem red roses, ordered for opening night of _Troilus and Cressida_. He has enough foresight to expect Todd would have a panic attack if he had to hold the bouquet through the entire two and a half hour performance. He’s not going to be responsible for Todd having fifty tiny thorn pricks scattered across his palms from squeezing the stems too tight.

The roses are sent to Neil’s dressing room with special instruction (given to a freshman stagehand Knox bribes with ten dollars) to have them there after curtain call.

Knox convinces Todd to write a short poem on to the card to tuck into the bouquet. No signature on the card, but Neil will know.

The curtain will rise on _Troilus and Cressida_ tonight and the curtain will rise on the beautiful romantic relationship between two of his best friends in the whole world.

He tries to focus on the play, he really does. Neil makes for a tragic Hector, all full of promise and so destined for demise. But on one side, he has Todd, who manages to look fully enraptured while displaying all his anxious tells – shaking hands, tapping foot, general squirming.

And on the other side, he has Charlie. He cannot go five minutes without commentary – on the costumes, on the set, on the lines, on his boredom – and Knox bears the brunt of it. If only because Pitts is on Charlie’s left and he’s the most avid theatre lover after Neil. He’d shove Charlie’s entire bag of M&M’s down his throat if he missed an important line or subtle look.

(“Do you think I’m more of an Achilles or a Patroclus?”

“I’m clearly better looking than the girl playing Helen.”

“How long is this war going to go on for?”

“Also better looking than Paris.”

“I got it – you’re Patroclus and I’m Achilles.”)

Knox tries to do the M&M shoving two hours in. An agitated old lady a row back chastises them both. It’s open mic night redux.

He finally bribes Charlie to shut up by promising he’ll distract Meeks and Cameron long enough for Charlie to do a keg stand at the cast party.

But Knox might have jumped to bribery too early - Charlie is enraptured by the climactic battle between Hector and Achilles. They all are.

Todd might be crying. Pitts definitely is.

The lights lower to an explosion of applause. When the lights rise again, Knox and his roommates politely applaud through the ensemble and bit players and everyone else not named Neil Perry. And when their tragic hero does grace the stage for his bow, they vault to their feet. The entire theatre fills with the sounds of their hoots and yawps.

The ladies behind them may be out for blood now. Knox has no room to feel embarrassed, his whole being swelling with pride and happiness for his friend.

They make a beeline for the stage door in the lobby. Pitts elbowed some children out of the way in the process.

It’s worth seeing the exuberant look on Neil’s face when he bursts through the double doors, screaming “Victory!”

“Pretty sure the Trojans lost the war,” Meeks says, but he’s beaming when Neil crashes into him and Cameron.

“But he will rise again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow!”

“Wrong play.” Cameron gets a light shove for that. He’s smiling, too.

Knox would never say it out loud, too afraid of being called a sap, but he loves the nights where all his roommates look like this, completely happy and completely together.

His view of the happiness is blocked when Neil throws an arm around his neck and pulls him down into a hug. He’s sure Charlie is trying to worm his way into the hug too and soon Pitts has his beautiful lanky limbs around all three of them and someone is yelling in his ear, “Cameron, stop being a dick and get in here.”

Knox really does love this. It’s a friendship he’d suffocate for.

He’s let up for air when Cameron and Charlie’s bickering in the midst of the hug leads to Meeks wriggling his way out and Todd ducks out with him and Pitts takes the separation as an opportunity to talk Neil’s ear off with his questions about the play. Neil hardly attempts to look like he’s listening.

He’s looking at Todd with a sickeningly fond smile.

Todd is looking at him with the hint of a blush spreading across his cheeks.

And it occurs to Knox there should be a bouquet of roses in Neil’s arms.

“Uh, Neil?”

Neil makes a small hum of acknowledgment even as he’s inching his way towards Todd, undoubtedly for a solo hug.

Knox tries to brainstorm at the speed of light for a reason to ask Neil if he got flowers in his dressing room without it sounding like Knox himself sent them. “Was there anything -uh...special in your…”

The double doors clamor open again and Ginny glides into the lobby.

With a bouquet of long stem red roses clutched in her elbow.

“Neil!” she squeals as she vaults into his arms, the flowers crushed between them.

“Aren’t they beautiful,” Ginny is saying, showing off her flowers to a politely interested Cameron and a completely shutdown Todd. She passes the card to Cameron for the both to look at. Todd already knows what it says. “It must be a secret admirer.”

No one could miss how she flutters her eyelashes at Neil. He gives her a good natured shrug. “Must be.”

She snatches the card back up in one hand and Neil’s wrist in other. “Let’s get to this cast party. I wanna drink.” She pulls Neil into the lobby crowd, with the roommates one by one trailing after them.

Leaving Knox.

“Wanna close your mouth there, Knoxious?”

And Charlie.

He places a hand under Knox’s chin and snaps his gaping mouth closed. That only allows Knox to start gritting his teeth together with such force that they should crack under the strain.

He did not start the night with a murder list.

He’s ending the night with one. The punk freshman stage hand is right at the top.

“That was your idea, wasn’t it?” Charlie has moved in front of him, looking a strange mixture of vindicated and pitying.

Knox says nothing.

“Bouquet of roses has lover boy Knox written all over it.” He reaches up to ruffle Knox’s hair. Knox has no energy to dodge. His bangs flop in his eyes and it takes an angry exhale to blow them to the side.

“They were supposed to be for Neil,”

“From you?”

“No! From…” Knox cuts himself off. His lips tremble, desperate to explode forth with the whole plan and all the ways God and his creations have conspired against him. But his last nerve tells him to hold on, if not for his own sanity than for poor Todd.

He’s struck with the image of Todd wringing his gloved hands as he trails after Neil and Ginny, nose and eyes suspiciously red but nothing he could not blame on the cold November night. He’ll have to watch as Ginny monopolizes Neil’s time while the cast party rages around him. More romantic hardships, all at the hands of Knox.

The aggressive tension in his body dissipates, replaced with the fatigue of defeat.

“Now I’m out ten bucks because some fucking tech kid has a crush on Ginny.” Knox’s sigh is so bitter he can taste it on his tongue.

Charlie chuckles. “That and whatever you and a mysterious shy friend who shall not be named paid for the flowers.”

Knox must look genuinely morose because Charlie swings an arm around his waist and starts pulling him through the crowd, whispering as they go, “Want me to beat up the little shit for you?”

The laughter bubbles out of Knox before he can stop it. “Honestly...yeah.”

They leave the theatre, Charlie’s arm still warmly fitted around Knox’s waist, carefully guiding him away from all the cracks in the sidewalk. Cameron, Meeks, and Pitts idle across the street, waiting in the cold so they would not be left behind. Maybe this night will not be a total wash.

(“Hey Pitts! We got a kid we have to murder at the cast party!”

“Cool!”)

But he’ll probably have to get in the middle of that.

 

...

 

_december_

The Definitive List of Things Knox Overstreet Needs Right Now

  1. A break



“I have two questions for you.”

Knox drops his whole glass of cherry red punch back into the punch bowl because he’d know that voice anywhere and she has two whole questions for him.

He whips around to face Chris. Her cheeks are flushed and she’s holding a nearly drained red solo cup. And she’s smiling impossibly wide. Knox swallows. “I…hopefully I have two answers for you.”

“Neil…” Chris glances over to where Neil and Charlie are perched on the coffee table scream “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” at the top of their lungs. Knox spies Cameron glaring by the fireplace. That he’s not demanding they climb down is the real Christmas miracle.

“Apologies for anything he’s said tonight.” Knox turns back to Chris. “He wanted to drink like the world’s gonna end. Direct quote.”

“No, he hasn’t said anything.” Someone has cranked the volume up on the speaker, which means Neil and Charlie have to crank their volume up. Charlie’s basically screeching. To compete, Chris takes a step closer and Knox tries to remember how to breathe. “I guess I just have to come out and say it...Ginny’s really into him. Has been all year. She wants to know if she’s wasting her time.”

Knox’s eyes flash to Neil, arm slung around Charlie’s neck, face red and covered in sweat, smiling brighter than the Christmas tree lights they precariously strung around the living room earlier that afternoon. And then Knox finds Todd. Cornered by Cameron complaining, probably about the noise and the number of people and the sticky floors and that no one wants to get it on with him. Todd’s nodding along, but his eyes never leave the wobbly coffee table and Neil singing off key.

Knox opens his mouth to answer, but Chris beats him to it. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She’s also looking at Todd looking at Neil. Knox suddenly wishes it were as easy as Neil looking over at them and seeing them watching Todd and looking at Todd and figuring it out. Figuring out that Todd’s eyes have never left Neil. Not for as long as he’s known him.

Charlie nearly pushes Neil off the table. For a split second, it seems like he’ll crash land on Pitts, but Neil saves himself at the last moment. His laughter and Charlie’s laughter ring out above Darlene Love. Neil’s laugh is high and sweet and Charlie’s sounds somehow off key and Knox smiles because of course even Charlie’s laugh cannot help but march out of tune.

Neil nearly falls a second time, pushed again. A push.

“I’ll be right back,” Knox shouts at Chris. He starts fighting past the drunk sophomores desperate for more punch.

He distantly hears Chris yelling after him, “I still have my other question!”

Charlie nearly backhands Knox in the face when he reaches the coffee table. That would have been twice in one semester. He thinks maybe Charlie is apologizing, but Knox is too busy yanking at the sleeve of Neil’s heinous Christmas sweater. “Neil!” He’s belting alongside Mariah Carey. Perfectly. Because of course he is. “Neil!”

Neil stops mid-belt and casts his cloudy eyes down at Knox. Cloudy but not completely unalert. Knox can work with that. He pulls at Neil’s wrist until he jumps off the coffee table. Now Charlie is definitely yelling, something about Knox stealing his karaoke partner. Knox is tempted to shout back that they’ve never owned a karaoke machine, but Meeks beats him to it. God bless him. Knox has more important things to do than get sucked into an argument with drunk Charlie.

He shoves through the sweaty crowd, Neil in tow, and hightails it up the stairs. Neil’s talking, babbling really, and Knox elects not to listen. Or maybe Knox is drunker than he thought he was and he can only focus on taking the stairs two at a time. He hauls Neil into the first room with an open door.

Cameron’s room.

He won’t say anything about the door being open tomorrow morning.

The weed smell might give it away, though.

“If we’re gonna hook-up, we really shouldn’t do it in Cameron’s room.” Neil’s giggling hysterically. Knox must be gaping like a fish because Neil’s laughter only grows when he looks over at him.

“You…you…what…no! What…you wanna hook up with me?” Knox needs to sit down, but he doesn’t dare touch Cameron’s bed.

“Not particularly and you look like you’re about pass out, so you definitely don’t want to hook up with me.” Neil wipes away a fake tear and Knox narrows his eyes at him. Not as drunk as he originally thought Neil was, not by a long shot. “So, why are we up here?”

“Chris came to talk to me, downstairs, a few minutes ago.”

“That’s great!” Neil sloppily makes to hug him. Knox holds him back with a hand braced against his chest.

“It was about you.”

Neil takes an exaggerated step back. He’s truly at his most dramatic when he’s had more than one shot. “Oh…oh! I’ve really never talked to her…”

“No, no, not about you and her. About Ginny.”

Neil’s face drops. “Oh…shit.”

Knox nods, maybe a bit over-eager. “And it made me realize you need a push. So…I’m pushing you.”

Neil’s brows knit together. After thirty seconds of not connecting the dots, he starts glancing around the room as if he expects Charlie to jump out and try to push him out the window. It’s then that Knox realizes he should probably clarify.

“Go talk to Todd.”

Neil’s eyes turn to saucers, but Knox leaves him no room to start protesting.

“No more roses at opening nights or trying to get him to read a poem at open mic or tricking you into a couple’s costume. Just talk to each other,” Knox pleads.

Neil opens his mouth to reply at the same time the door bursts open and Charlie topples in, a full bottle of Bailey’s clutched in one fist. “Really guys? In Cameron’s room? With God watching?” He shakes his bottle at the cross hanging over Cameron’s bed.

“We’re not…!”

“No, no no!” Charlie cuts Knox off and saunters over to swing an arm around Knox’s shoulder. “I’m happy for you guys. I really am. You’ll have to break the news to Todd yourselves though because no way am I breaking that kid’s heart…”

Neil’s face is bright red and it’s no longer from the heat of downstairs or singing at the top of his lungs. Knox feels his face burning too, but he forces himself to ignore Charlie. He looks to Neil instead. “Go find him.”

Neil nods, that Christmas light smile ready to burst on to his face. He gives a small salute to Knox and Charlie. “Captains. Wish me luck.”

He ducks out of the room. Knox mentally crosses his fingers.

“Wait, I was just kidding about you guys hooking up. Did something…”

“Nope.” Knox meets Charlie’s confused eyes and grins. “But he’s finally going to go talk to Todd.”

Now, Knox never assumed he’d go deaf before he met Charlie Dalton. But after getting blaring whooping in his ear for the last two and a half years, Knox knows his eardrums are a ticking time bomb.

But Knox whoops with him this time. He whoops until his voice is hoarse. Until both he and Charlie have to collapse on to Cameron’s bed in a fit of laughter. Knox reaches over and snatches the Bailey’s from Charlie’s hand and takes a long swig.

“I fucking did it,” Knox announces to the ceiling.

“And all it really took was telling Neil to get his shit together?”

“Who knew?” Knox takes another victory swig. He swats Charlie’s grabby hands away and hugs the bottle to his chest. He deserves it.

“Eh, Meeks probably did.”

Charlie’s off key laughter fills the room. Only, it doesn’t sound so off key in here. It makes a perfect harmony with Knox’s laughter and soon the room is filled with music, underscored by the hum of the bass line from downstairs.

When Knox turns his head slightly, Charlie is looking at him. And there’s no bravado, no Christmas god who has to prove they throw the best parties on campus. Just Charlie, looking at him with a smile. Dare he call it a soft smile. Wistful.

“Get your shit together, Knox,” Charlie whispers.

There’s so little space between them. If Charlie moves an inch, if he moves another, it will disappear.

Knox moves an inch.

“Come on, get your shit together.” Charlie exhales, his breath close enough to hit his face. “Go find Chris.”

Charlie steals the bottle of Bailey’s back and launches off the bed. “She’s not going to wait down there forever.” Charlie holds his empty hand out for Knox to grab on to. Knox can’t imagine it would steady him. Not tonight, not now.

So, he shakes his head. “I need to breathe. Gimme another minute.”

Charlie’s back to smirking. The party god putting his face back on. “Well, I’m going to make sure Cameron’s not having an aneurysm.”

“No you’re not.” Even Knox can muster up a smile for that.

“No I’m not. I’m going to go cause it.” Charlie’s almost out the door, but he pauses in the doorframe. “Don’t be too long. At least come see the fireworks go off around Anderson’s head when Perry finally kisses him.”

Charlie disappears. Knox hears his feet pounding down the stairs. When the door slams closed, Knox collapses back on the bed, heartbeat pounding in his ears.

It would have been a stupid drunk mistake. Kissing him. Kissing Charlie Dalton.

But Knox is thinking about fireworks now. Would they have erupted around them if Charlie moved that last inch?

Someone else is coming up the stairs and his heart stops at the thought it could be Cameron. Knox should hide in the closet or squeeze himself behind the door, but instead he bolts out of the room. Just in time to almost ram into Neil and Todd.

Both out of breath. Both glowing.

“Hey! Chris is looking for you!” Todd yells this. Todd Anderson. Yelling.

Maybe Neil Perry, three hours ago, was right. The world is coming to an end.

All Knox can muster is a weak, “Oh?”

Neil is impatiently tugging Todd by the wrist, eyes darting between Todd’s face and their bedroom. A kid on Christmas morning, eager to see what awaits him at the bottom of the stairs. Here, at the end of the hallway.

He spares one look at Knox. He mouths, “Thank you.”

Knox tries to give him a happy smile back. It fades as the pair basically sprints the short distance to their room and slams the door shut behind them. It leaves Knox two choices: return to the party or hole himself off in his room and listen to sounds on the other side of the wall.

Knox stumbles down the stairs. An unhappy Cameron waits on the landing.

“I’m going to kill Charlie.”

What does Knox have to say to that? Get in line? Not before he explains exactly what happened upstairs?

Knox says nothing at all. He shrugs helplessly and clings to the wall, slowly making his way back over to the punch bowl. Chris stands a few feet away, leaning against a kitchen cabinet with a sniffling Ginny at her side. Knox thinks about heading in a different direction, but Chris catches his eye and puffy-eyed Ginny finds him, too.

She whispers something to Chris, who seems to protest. Ginny stops her with a head shake and some kind of a reassurance before pushing out of the kitchen. Another friend waits on the other side of the kitchen island, ready to put an arm around Ginny and guide her towards the front door. The whole scene floods Knox with guilt that he doesn’t know what to do with.

He wants to bolt. He needs to bolt. But even after the mess upstairs, Knox still gets sucked into Chris’s gravity.

“I’m sorry about Ginny.” Knox wants to smack himself for the lame response.

“It’s no one’s fault. I think even she kind of knew it was a long shot.” Her reassuring words do nothing to assuage Knox’s guilt. He’s feeling everything a little too strongly now. It’s all too easy to blame the Bailey’s.

“You had a second question?” Knox can’t find it within himself to prolong the conversation. The room’s two hundred degrees and the three hundred bodies in it are sticking to the walls, the furniture, his own side. Maybe he can’t run back to his room, but he can run outside.

“Yeah…” Chris trails off. Knox guesses she can see he’s floundering. But when he tries to muster a smile, he can feel it turn into a grimace. “I guess the Neil-Todd thing got me thinking...does Charlie know how you feel about him?”

Knox throws up in the sink.

Merry Christmas.

 

...

 

_january_

The Definitive List of Things Knox Overstreet is Certain Of

  1. Neil and Todd are in love
  2. Chris Noel is still the most beautiful girl alive
  3. Charlie Dalton can never know about his stupid crush



Knox cannot stop looking at Charlie.

He could rationalize it many ways. Charlie Dalton has always been a man who demands to be looked at; it seems written in the tracks of his DNA. He bursts through their front door when he gets home from a class. He walks across the coffee table when he goes to get a drink because he knows it will distract the people on the couch from their homework. There’s rarely night when he does not throw himself on Knox’s bed before slowly migrating over to his own.

He yells songs in the Commons. He kicks his feet up on library tables. He tells random freshmen to call him Nuwanda.

And he digs his fingers into Knox’s sides on the way to their economics class to make him giggle. And he tugs at Knox’s hair when they’re making dinner so Charlie can steal a bite. And he wolf whistles the first time Knox emerges in the soft red sweater his mom gave him for Christmas and Knox’s cheeks heat to match.

It’s more than caving to Charlie’s insatiable need for attention, though.

Knox always swats Charlie away when he tries to tickle him. Now his gaze lingers on Charlie’s hands, wondering what it would be like intertwine their fingers. He’s used to pushing Charlie away when he steals bites from the frying pan on the stove. Now Knox watches Charlie as he goes, with that self-satisfied look on his face, swallowing his stolen bite of eggs. He wonders if Charlie would ruffle his hair and swipe bites of his food at a fancy restaurant in town. And when he whistles, Knox tries to figure out if Charlie’s appraising up and down could be the real thing.

He wants Charlie to reach out a hand and touch the sweater, place his palm right over the steady thrumming of Knox’s beating heart.

Fuck.

If any of his friends notice Knox has spent an embarrassing increase in time staring at Charlie’s hands and Charlie’s shoulders and Charlie’s face and Charlie’s smile, they’re surprisingly kind enough not to say anything. Which has gotten Knox thinking that the increase is not so notable. That perhaps it’s not an increase at all. That it’s been Knox obliviously not noticing he’s always given Charlie all the attention he could ever need.

Fuck.

He’s spending what feels like the third sad Sunday night in his bedroom wallowing in his feelings. Charlie likes to spend his Sunday nights recovering from his Saturday night hangover which is really an early Sunday morning hangover because he almost always wakes up still drunk. Recovering consists of lazily eating his way through the pantry and binging The Twilight Zone with Pitts on the living room couch.

Knox never thought he’d thank God for Charlie’s abominable self-care methods, but it’s kept him out of the room and from noticing Knox’s pity party of one.

Tonight’s pity party includes a vain attempt to do his history homework and a jumbo bag of Sour Patch Kids. He’s one page into the reading and halfway through the bag. His tongue stings. He goes for another handful anyway.

Someone pounds on the door. Knox rips his desk drawer open and slams it shut the moment the shameful bag lands inside. All his friends know Sour Patch Kids are his go to “Depressed and In Love” snack.

The next second, Neil strolls into the room and collapses on Charlie’s bed.

“Hi?”

“Twilight Zone got old,” Neil offers as an explanation.

“Don’t let Pitts hear that blasphemy.” Knowing Neil will not be leaving anytime soon, Knox shuts the book he’s hardly touched. He’s mid-chair turn around when a thought dawns on him: “Why aren’t you bothering Todd?”

“Wanted to bother you.”

“Gee thanks.”

Neil shoots him a sideways smile before his eyes go to the ceiling. They lapse into a comfortable quiet, stretching long enough that Knox wonders if he should return to pretend studying. He blindly reaches backward for his book when Neil speaks up again: “It’s cool, by the way. The pact you and Todd made.”

Neil says it so casually that for a dumb moment, Knox thinks he’s talking about some kind of homework pact.

And when the switch flips, Knox knocks his book off the desk. It lands with a resounding thud that bounces off the walls. But it’s nothing compared to the ringing in his ears.

In a daze, Knox breathes out, “He told you.” It’s not a question. Todd told him.

“You don’t keep secrets in relationships, Knox,” Neil says like he’s passing on sage wisdom. “But I wasn’t really surprised.”

“You knew?”

“I kinda guessed after Halloween. You were pretty insistent about me wearing the angel costume. I actually thought you maybe wanted us to do a couples costume…”

“I hate you.” To punctuate the point, Knox chucks his pillow at Neil’s stupid grinning face. Neil catches it with ease. Knox tries not to look too childishly grumpy when he crosses his arms in frustration. “So why didn’t you just talk to Todd when you realized what he was trying to do?”

“I guess I wanted to give him a little more time to confess himself.” Neil’s glow is a little less pronounced now. He’s strangely sheepish. “Then…I don’t know. I started getting embarrassed that I waited so long. I thought he deserved better than a guy waiting around for him to make the first move.”

“Reading between the lines here, you’re saying I totally am the reason you two finally got together.”

“Thank you, Knox.”

The honesty catches Knox off guard. All he can do is blush and duck his head, a fine impersonation of their good friend Todd.

After another beat of comfortable silence, Neil asks, “So what’s going on with you and Chris?”

Knox lets out a low sigh. “Nothing.”

“Yeah I know. I thought it would just be nice to ask.”

“I hate you.”

There’s a hesitant knock at the door. Neil’s face goes aglow again, to the disgusting extent that Knox mouths “I hate you” again before calling “I told you that you don’t have to knock!”

Todd slips into the room and makes a beeline for the spot next to Neil on the bed. Knox tries his best to glower at Neil, daring him to start getting cuddly on Charlie’s bed. But when he turns to Todd, he softens.

It’s truly amazing seeing Todd lit up with the same glowing, radiant happiness Neil has always carried with him. The whole mood of the house feels lighter. Even Cameron seems to walk with a skip in his step these days. They all make to rib Todd and Neil about public displays of affection and the gooey looks they share when they think no one’s watch. But no one dares wish it away.

Even now as Neil tries to worm his hand into Todd’s and Knox cannot push down the tinge of jealousy he feels when he sees it.

“We were talking about Knox and his hopeless quest for Chris.”

Knox wishes he had a second pillow to throw.

Todd gives him a sympathetic smile, which is too easy to read as pity. “We can try to arrange...a double date, maybe? I’ve been texting her…”

“Stop, stop, stop!” Knox interrupts. “You have Chris’s number? Since when?”

“My boyfriend’s got farther with Chris than you ever have,” Neil says with a smug look that bitterly reminds Knox of Charlie.

Todd elbows Neil in the ribs, but his face is a sweet dusty pink. “We’re in a science class together this semester and I think we’re going to be lab partners.”

Knox all but groans. If being lab partners is not the perfect way to get to know and fall in love with someone. But as Knox’s mind tries to conjure up the biology class fantasy, Chris’s sunny face keeps turning into Charlie’s cocky one.

“What’s the problem here, Knox? Todd is offering you a pretty great way to get a date with the girl of your dreams,” Neil says. The words sound straightforward enough, but Knox has known Neil for far too long. There’s something cooking under his sideways smile and the dangerous glint that turns his warm brown eyes sharp.

“What do you know that I don’t know?”

Knox’s suspicious tone catches Todd off guard and he turns curiously towards Neil, the smirking bastard.

“It’s not really my place to say,” Neil says with pseudo-innocence.

“Wait, what’s happening here?” Todd asks, shifting away from Neil slightly.

That tiny movement takes the act right off Neil’s face. His focus goes immediately from Knox to Todd and he looks apologetic. “It’s not my secret,” Neil says and he throws a pointed look Knox’s way. Todd follows his gaze and both of their eyes are back on him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Knox says, throwing up his hands.

Neil has no smirk anymore. “I’m just wondering, is it really Chris you want on the double date?” Neil’s eyes discreetly fall on the disaster that is Charlie’s desk.

Knox pushes up out of his chair so fast, he knocks it to the ground and gets his foot caught on one the legs. He crashes back into his own desk, but he can hardly feel a sharp corner digging into his back. Shock is a hell of a pain killer.

“What-...how-...you-...what are you a mind reader?” Knox is aware his voice has gone up to an octave he has never reached before. He’s also aware that may be the reason a dog has started frantically barking outside. But he feels justified waking up the neighborhood. He certainly will not be sleeping well tonight.

Meanwhile, Neil looks ready to burst into hysterical laughter. “Or maybe you’re just obvious?”

“Again...what’s happening?” Todd looks lost and then a little afraid when Knox forcefully points in his direction.

“See! Not obvious!”

Neil shrugs, “He wasn’t really looking.”

Knox’s eyebrow must be past his hairline. “And you have been?” Neil nods without shame. “Why?”

“Okay, well that’s honestly not my s-...”

The door slams against the wall, reverberating in the frame. Charlie lumbers in - zombie-like and hugging a giant bowl of potato chips to his chest - and settles into Knox’s bed without even a passing glance in their direction. He’s shoving a handful of chips into his mouth before his half-lidded eyes fall on Neil and Todd.

“Sleepover?” The words are muffled around the chips.

Knox slams his forehead against the back of his chair. “Something like that.”

 

...

 

_february_

The Definitive List of Things Knox Overstreet **(and Charlie Dalton)** Know About Love




It’s supposed to be a poem.

Knox admittedly does not have a great track record with those.

That’s why he’s jammed in the corner of the overflowing campus coffee shop, staring at the near blank page, waiting for the brain trust to arrive. Todd is supposed to provide more inspired verses and Neil is supposed to help plan a quasi-romantic situation that’s a little less loverboy Knox and little more Charlie Dalton.

The brain trust seems to have gotten caught up with something else. Knox does not want to imagine what that could be.

He picks up his pencil again, willing the cogs in his brain to start spinning and for the words to start flowing from his fingertips. He has an image of himself wildly scrawling line upon line of poetry onto the page, until the pads of his fingers are stained with graphite and the paper is crammed with verse.

Reality hits when the cogs in his brain slowly start click together just to sputter to a pitiful stop. He has nothing.

“Hey there!”

His body has been trained to jolt to attention when that melodic voice sounds nearby. When Knox looks up, Chris stands in front of his table. She seems to have come from a run, her hair swishing in a messy ponytail and her smile tinged with happy exhaustion. She’s glowing.

Knox can still appreciate the sun even as he no longer wishes to burn.

“Uh - hey! Wanna…” Knox waves aimlessly at the chair across from him.

“Yeah, thanks!” Chris collapses into the chair, but she leans forward, resting her chin in her hands and staring intently at Knox. “Whatcha working on? You looked so serious before I walked over.”

Knox glances down at his one-line embarrassment and fights down the urge to ball up the paper and eat it. “Just some piece of...it was supposed to be a poem.”

“For?” Chris’s eyes are sparkling.

“My idiot roommate.” Knox’s lips betrays him, splitting into a grin all on their own. He feels mushy and disgusting.

He wants to live in the feeling forever.

The feeling is apparently infectious - Chris has a soft and gooey smile to match. She reaches across the table and grasps Knox’s hand, squeezing lightly. “I’m so happy for you.”

Three months ago, Knox thought he’d combust if Chris Noel ever held his hand. Now, he’s only happy he can call her a friend. He squeezes her hand once too, but shakes his head, “Nothing’s happened yet. And who knows if it ever will.”

“Hey, chin up, kid. If Neil and Todd can figure it all out, you can too.”

“Agreed.”

The resounding agreement is followed by Neil and Todd strolling up to the table hand and hand, Neil with a sly smile on his face. Knox groans audibly, drawing tinkly laughter from Chris. “Sorry, I think I stole one of your seats,” she says, halfway to standing when Neil holds up his free hand.

“Nah, we’re not staying.”

Knox sputters. “What? I’ve been waiting -”

“And Knox isn’t staying either,” Todd says, less brusquely than Neil, but with an uncharacteristic amount of certainty. Knox catches a glimpse of his own look of bewilderment in the table’s napkin dispenser.

“Is that so?” Chris raises an eyebrow, glancing between Knox and the couple. She stands and says, “I’ll leave you to it.” She waves goodbye and makes her graceful exit, leaving Knox in the hands of two people he now has reason to believe are plotting against him.

“Come on!” Neil starts tugging on the collar of Knox’s sweater. “Up, up, up!”

Before he can shrug his coat on, Knox finds himself being dragged at light speed out of the coffee shop, through the courtyard, off of campus completely. He’s tripping along after Neil and Todd, jean cuffs getting coated in slush, on autopilot as they turn down a familiar street.

(“...and I want to point out you guys were the ones  
who told me to go to the campus coffee shop  
and then you abandon me for an hour and a half…”)

His rant brings them up the steps of their porch. There’s a rotting pumpkin still in residence on the top step. A Christmas wreath hangs dying on the front door. Pitts had stuck jelly red and pink hearts on the front window. The largest heart had been ripped in half by Charlie, completing the picture of Holiday Horror that is the front of their house.

“Why are we back here?” Knox asks, a tad breathless.

Neil stays silent. For a moment, Knox faintly wonders if they’re carrying out his murder. It’d fit the aesthetic of the house.

Instead of pulling out a knife, Neil swings the door open and before Knox can get a single word in, Todd pushes him through the door.

It slams behind him.

Knox whirls around and all but rams into the door, pounding his fits against the center. “Neil! Todd! What the hell?” He knocks once, twice, three times before resting his palm on the door, pitching forward slightly.

“Hey, Knoxious?”

Knox freezes.

Avoiding is not the right word to describe what he has been doing to Charlie ever since Neil confronted him about his school boy crush. But Knox certainly started spending more time in the library doing work than their bedroom, coming up with reasons to miss lunch when it would only be the two of them, falling asleep early or drifting into the room late to cut down on late night conversations.

Knox has been a terrible friend and everyone in the house knows it.

But he has no way to alleve the terrible ache in his chest when he sees Charlie smile. The ache used to be bearable with Chris, when he saw her a handful of times a week when he was lucky. Living with Charlie meant that ache never left him, not when Charlie always entered rooms beaming and Knox can only think what he’d give to kiss that smile.

He cannot turn around. Turning around means having to put into words all the pain and longing he’s been carrying around. He already proved how lamentably terrible he was with words while struggling for an hour and a half to write a poem.

He can run. He wants to run. It’s not as if Neil and Todd can barricade their front door.

But Charlie deserves better than that, far better than all Knox has given him.

Knox slowly lifts his head and shuffles around, prepared to see an irritated Charlie primed for a dramatic argument. So when he finally looks up and locks eyes with a nervous Charlie instead, he’s nearly too shocked to take in the rest of his surroundings.

Almost.

Only the fluorescent light in the kitchen is on. The rest of the living room is bathed in candlelight. All the candles are mismatched, various sizes and colors, no doubt swiped from their roommates and the campus chapel. It’s reckless and ridiculously Charlie and has Knox’s heart rapidly picking up in pace.

The long chapel-robbed candles sit in the middle of their kitchen table, which is draped in the red throw blanket usually found on the back of the couch. The place settings are crooked and the plates are different sizes and the pasta on them looks drenched in canned pasta sauce. Truly, ridiculously Charlie.

And the man himself stands leaning against the kitchen island, seemingly casual, but Knox notices how he’s fiddling with his fingers, knows all his tells. His goofy apron has enough red stains that it’s a miracle the pasta could have so much sauce on it. There’s a little red smear on his left cheek, too. Knox’s hand twitches with the desire to wipe it away.

But he stays standing in front of the door, too disoriented to trust taking even a single step.

Charlie has to break the silent standoff. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s February 13th,” Knox’s mouth provides dumbly.

Charlie shrugs, still aiming for casual, still wringing his hands. “Yeah well, I couldn’t go full hopeless romantic Knox.”

Despite everything, Knox lets out a huff. “No, that’d just be embarrassing.”

“Nah, I wanted to save February 14th for you,” Charlie’s smile bleeds confidence, but it falters slightly. “...if you want.”

His heart sings I want, I want, I want. He wants, he wants so badly. He wants a messy Charlie in a “Kiss the Cook” apron smeared in marinara sauce and smelling of garlic and the cologne his dad gets him every Christmas and he’s out of by March. And he wants to worry that all the candles Charlie lit will burn the house down, but he also wants to laugh about the steam coming out of Cameron’s ears when he sees the fire hazard later, as though Knox had never worried at all. And he wants to be breathless in their room laughing, from teasing Cameron and from talking about life and from kissing him senseless until the small hours of the morning. He wants to plan a cheesy February 14th date and messier, banal follow up date for the week after, and the week after that, and the week after that.

He wants, he wants, he wants.

But his mind yearns for explanation and it keeps a momentary stranglehold on his heart.

Knox takes a tentative step forward, waves a delicate hand around. “I gotta know...what is all this?”

Silence falls over the room again. Charlie appears to be searching for words. It’s maddening to wait, when he now has proof that what he wants is something he can have, but he knows better than to interrupt. Knows better than anyone that if pushed too far, too fast to express his most vulnerable emotions, Charlie will disappear back behind a wall of jokes and bravado.

He lets Charlie play with the bow of his apron, tugging the loose knot until he at last sucks in a breath and looks up at Knox again. “Neil has been kind of...helping me woo you...since September.”

Neil, help, woo, September. The words refuse to click together in his brain. All he can stammer out is, “Woo me?”

“That’s the lover boy Knox way to put it, yeah.”

Knox huffs again. It seems lover boy jokes will be the continued tension diffuser. Knox can take it. He’s been taking it since freshman year. It stopped his brain from frying. And it keeps Charlie talking.“How have you been…wooing me?”

“Doing more affectionate stuff. Like cuddling during midterms. Dropping hints that I see us like romantic couples. The couple’s costume on Halloween. I thought that was kind of a dumb idea.”

Knox hopes his blush is not as red as the heat leads him to believe. “It’s not…terrible.”

Charlie must not notice Knox’s embarrassment because he continues through his list. “Writing the poem for you to apologize for the goldfish. Christmas party…”

Knox’s brain short circuits, overloaded with feelings vindication and utter confusion. “Wait! At the Christmas party, you told me to go find Chris. Right before I thought we were maybe gonna…”

“I chickened out.”

Throughout the conversation, Charlie had played with his fingers or his apron or let his gaze drift to the floor when he had to admit something difficult. For the first time, he fully turns away, studying the staircase like he’s now planning to make a run. Knox racks his mind for anything to say that will keep him here. The perfect words seem perpetually out of reach.

“That doesn’t sound like Charlie Dalton,” Knox finally says, so soft he’s not sure he wanted Charlie to hear it.

Charlie snorts, but it’s humorless. “Guess I really am human, huh?” He sighs and his eyes drift further away. “Neil just kept talking about all these little signs he had been getting from Todd. And I started getting it into my head you weren’t giving me any little signs, at least not intentionally.”

It’s Knox’s turn to hang his head. He had not been giving any intentional little signs last semester. That moment in Cameron’s room was his light switch moment, his dawning realization Charlie could be something more than a friend. All that time, Charlie had been taking shots in the dark, trying to reach a fumbling Knox nursing a crush going nowhere.

“What were the little signs?” Knox asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

Charlie looks again in Knox’s direction, a small victory, but his expression is disbelieving. “Uhm- shouldn’t you know? Pretty sure it was all the stuff you were coaching Todd to do.”

Awkward touches, flowers going to the wrong person, unromantic poems read in crowded coffee shops? Knox is hardly coach of the year and he can admit it. “Typical lover boy Knox stuff?”

“Always.” Charlie grins, unbridled and real, and the room no longer seems dim.

That genuine smile gives Knox the heart to walk forward, move until he reaches the table. He wants to sound confident and sauve when he speaks again. He has to grip a chair to steady himself first. “I can get you flowers, if you want. And read you a poem at an open mic. I’ll even make it about our stupid dead goldfish.”

“Even in her grave, Goldie cannot escape your torment.” Charlie’s grin has turned lighter, softer. It’s making it harder not to surge forward, grab the loop of the apron with both hands, and crush their lips together.

So Knox keeps talking. “And I can kiss you at a Christmas party.”

Charlie laughs, still beautifully off-key even with no music playing. “As adorable as that sounds, Knoxious, think we can kiss a little before then too?”

“Hey, I’m just trying to give you your little signs!”

Knox is laughing too and he can sense everything slotting into place, somehow imperfectly and perfectly all at once.

“Get over here.”

And when they finally meet in the middle, true to his cliche lover boy roots, Knox sees fireworks.

 

...

 

_september – senior year_

They break into the clock tower the first week back and Knox only almost twists his ankle when his foot falls through an old, rickety ladder and their homecoming bash ends with a belligerent freshman upending the punch bowl and nearly brawling with Charlie on the sticky hardwood floor and the season starts changing the leaves from green to vibrant oranges and reds but the temperature stays the same, so the chances of his hand getting clammy when he holds Charlie’s skyrockets. It never makes him want to pull away, though. Nothing ever does.

“Did you ask the barista to put a heart in this?”

Well.

“Aw no, babe, that’s adorable.”

Almost nothing.

“It’s stupid and you’re stupid.”

And Knox is snatching the cup away and trying to trash it and Charlie is yanking him backwards by the collar of his shirt and Neil is somewhere in the background filming it all while Todd stands next to him blowing on a latte, no heart to be seen in his foam. They’ll be playing the video of Charlie nearly knocking Knox into the garbage can on infinite loop in the house later that night. Charlie’s arm will be casually draped over him even as he constantly leans in Pitts’s space to watch again.

No, he has no plans to pull away.

 

...

 

_october_

“Ow! Stop trying to pull my arm off!”

“You’re the one who insisted on holding hands.”

The leaves coat the campus lawns now and Neil, Charlie, and Pitts have started conspiring on a Halloween party to best last year’s and every surface in their entire living room seems covered in pumpkins or a variety of squash and Knox had to keep Charlie from covering every wall of their bedroom in cheap spider webbing and he starts to regret convincing everyone to visit the school’s semi-haunted corn maze just a little bit.

In the blur of excitement that he had a significant other to travel through the maze with, he forgot the corn maze notoriously got Charlie (and Pitts for that matter) a little over enthusiastic.

There’s the telltale revving of a chainsaw ahead. Out of the corner of his eye, Knox sees Todd, Meeks, and Cameron all shrink back.

Charlie yanks his hand out of Knox’s, puts that hand in the crook of Knox’s elbow, and drags him forward. He pauses only momentarily to turn his head and say, “Don’t worry, Knoxious, I’ll protect you.” He winks and then they’re off to the races again.

Knox is sure his shoulder will be dislocated by the end of the maze, as sure as he once was that he would be the one doing the protecting if he ever brought someone he loved to a fright night. He finds he doesn’t mind the other way around.

And if he amps up his screams after that, no one has to know that. Sure, he’s no Neil, but he can be an actor when he wants to be.

 

...

 

_november_

The lights have only just gone down, stage lights up, Todd on his left already enraptured, a bouquet of lilacs bunched in one hand, and Charlie chooses that moment to lean into Knox’s space and blow into his ear.

“Pst.”

Knox squeezes the hand he has on Charlie’s knee, a quiet and desperate plea for silence.

“Psssssst.”

He feels that stream of air go straight to his brain. Knox jerks his shoulder up, but Charlie only moves about a fraction of inch and returns quickly, propping his chin on that same shoulder.

“Did you send roses to Neil again?”

Knox grimaces. “Charlie.”

“Because as your loving boyfriend, I have a few concerns.”

God bless Pitts for choosing that moment to flick Charlie in the back of the head. Knox has trouble swallowing down the laughter bubbling in his chest. Charlie stays blessedly silent after that, as if trying to prove a point to Pitts by giving him exactly what he wanted. And by the third act, Charlie’s head has tipped onto Knox’s shoulder and Knox would swear he fell asleep if he did not have the sound the Charlie’s soft snores memorized.

No, not asleep, simply quietly taking in Neil as a desperate Russian writer begging an equally desperate Russian actress Ginny to stay with him. He’ll still rib Neil a little later for always acting in boring old plays and when Cameron will accuse Charlie of actually sleeping through it, Charlie won’t argue it.

And Knox likes it that way, likes thinking this quiet and contemplative Charlie is a side he trusts with Knox and Knox alone.

 

...

 

_december_

When Chris visits their house in the early weeks of December, she asks if Santa Claus threw up in their living room.

The heads of the decorating committee may have gone a tad overboard this year. But Cameron had agreed to let them get a real tree this year and Charlie and Pitts managed to wrangle one in that skimmed the ceiling and then Neil argued the rest of the room needed to live up to the legendary tree. That meant stockings on the fireplace for all of them, wreaths on every wall, glittering red and silver and green garland not only wrapped around the tree, but around the kitchen island and the mantle and bannister. Charlie even covered the coffee table in wrapping paper.

It would all be destroyed come this weekend and their happy holidays bash.

So Knox basks in the Christmas explosion a little longer, propping his feet up on the red-paper coffee table and drinking hot cocoa out of a cheesy Santa mug and watching the fire crackle in the fireplace they are not supposed to light under any circumstance.

Knox loves the domesticity of it all, wonders if he’ll get to have it all next year, wishes fiercely that he will.

He glances down where Charlie’s head rests in his lap. He has a book open on his chest, long forgotten as he dozes. Knox smiles softly, goes to move the book away when Charlie’s eyes slowly blink open. He gives Knox a lazy smile that goes straight to his heart.

“Merry Christmas.”

Knox rolls his eyes. “It’s December 12th.”

Knox brushes the bangs away from Charlie’s eyes and keeps his hand nestled in his hair. It’s getting long. Knox refuses to tell Charlie he likes it best that way, as if he does not already know. Charlie’s still smiling that peaceful, tired smile.

Yeah, on the top of Knox’s Christmas list is getting to have this next year, and the year after, and for as long as he possibly can.

(“...so you’re gonna object to the mistletoe I put over your bed?”

“...race ya upstairs.”)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Word doc for this fic was first created 10/22/16. Every four months or so, I would revisit it, do some line edits, write a scene or two, and promptly forget about its existence again. Then two days ago, I opened the doc for my typical revisit. But suddenly it was a few hours later, the word count had past 7k, and I wasted too many words just to let this fade into obscurity again. Almost two years later, Good Grief has finally arrived.
> 
> 2\. Pacing? I don’t know her. I deeply apologize for some scenes meandering and others flying by. (and the poems are really dumb, I'm so sorry, I'm not a poet)
> 
> 3\. I'm honestly shocked I finished this, I truly am. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! I know this probably won't lead to a Knox/Charlie fic renaissance, but a girl can dream.


End file.
